No demons in all realms

Chapter 17 Righteous Spirit

That evening, when the adults in the village heard that a free schoolteacher had arrived, they all came to see him. They surrounded Su Yang, asking him all sorts of questions.

Su Yang simply replied firmly and earnestly, "You can just call me Su Yang. I am a scholar."

The villagers were skeptical, but they still brought all the children over the next day. There were twelve children in total, the oldest being eleven or twelve years old and the youngest only five or six. They stood in the mud house, looking curiously at the man whose face was covered with gauze.

On his first day, Su Yang discovered an extremely serious problem: these children couldn't even recognize basic characters, and some couldn't even write their own names. It wasn't because they were stupid; it was because no one was teaching them.

He decided to start teaching from scratch.

But other problems followed: he couldn't see the book.

Back when he was at Wanjian Manor, he could memorize books just by scanning them with his spiritual sense, but now he has no spiritual power at all, and he's blind, so he can't even open a book.

He could only use a clumsy method: he had the children copy the words onto wooden boards, and then he would touch them with his hands. The ink on the boards was raised, and after touching them many times, he could distinguish what the words were.

This method is very slow; it takes an hour to learn a dozen or so characters. For Su Yang, this is the only way.

He said gently to the children, "The teacher's eyesight is not good, so he learns slowly. Please be patient and wait for him."

The children were very well-behaved, waiting for the teacher to learn first. The little girls washed the wooden boards clean, and the little boys copied the words neatly so that he could touch them more clearly.

Su Yang taught the children to read while also studying on his own. He studied even more diligently than the children, because he was their only teacher.

He would wake up before dawn every day and sit in the yard, feeling the wooden planks. After finishing one, he would move on to the next, sometimes until midnight, his fingers would be blistered and raw, but he would still keep going.

Uncle Jin would visit him once a month, and each time he would bring him medicinal herbs.

Every time I came, I saw him sitting there touching the characters. None of his ten fingers were in good condition; his fingernails were all cracked, and there wasn't a single piece of good flesh on his hands. It was a shocking sight.

"He's clearly a descendant of the Demon King, yet he's so kind-hearted. Why does he do this?" Uncle Jin asked.

Without looking up, Su Yang said, "Don't you think this is very meaningful?"

Uncle Jin shook his head: "It means nothing to me. Everyone has a different destiny. You can help this village, but can you help the whole world?"

Su Yang's tone was calm and unwavering: "Then I will ensure that all the poor families in the world can afford to go to school and study."

Time flies, and three years have passed in the blink of an eye.

For the past three years, Su Yang has hardly left that small village. He teaches the children to read during the day and studies characters by hand at night.

The mud houses in the village were too dilapidated, leaking wind and rain, so he worked with the villagers to repair them. Lacking paper and pen, he wrote on the ground with twigs so the children could learn by following along.

At first, the villagers thought the blind man was just kind-hearted, but later they discovered that he was actually very knowledgeable.

Whether it's classics, history, philosophy, literature, poetry, or songs, this gentleman can speak fluently and clearly, making even adults enjoy listening to him.

Su Yang's reputation gradually spread, and everyone knew that there was a blind teacher in Qingniu Village who was very knowledgeable and taught students without charging them money.

But he knew that his knowledge was far from sufficient.

In three years, he "read" more than three thousand books. These books covered a wide range of topics: the Four Books and Five Classics, the works of various philosophers, historical records and local chronicles, military treatises and strategies, books on agriculture, sericulture, medicine and divination, and even travelogues and miscellaneous writings. He "read" every single book he could find.

After finishing each book, he would ponder it for several days, breaking down and analyzing the principles within. If he couldn't understand something, he would ask Uncle Jin to find other books for him to compare and contrast.

The number of children in the village grew from the initial twelve to more than thirty. Su Yang couldn't teach them all by himself, so he selected four of the best students from the older children to be his junior teachers and help him teach the younger students.

He wanted all the poor students in the world to have access to education. This idea started as a seed, but it grew bigger and bigger until it became a big tree.

He didn't tell anyone because he knew he couldn't do it yet. But he made a silent vow: he would do this one thing in his life.

In her fourth year of teaching, something happened that even Su herself did not expect.

That day, he was teaching the children about Mencius in the school. When he got to the part about "I am good at cultivating my vast and righteous spirit", he suddenly felt a strange sensation, as if something had exploded in his chest.

He couldn't describe the feeling, but he felt that every pore on his body had opened up, and something invisible was drilling into his body. It wasn't spiritual power, but it was purer and more powerful.

He stood there, frozen in place.

The children were terrified, thinking something had happened to their husband, and kept calling out to him.

It took Su Yang a long time to come to his senses. He took a deep breath and discovered that he could "see" some things, not with his eyes, of course, since he was still blind. He could "feel" everything around him.

His heart was like his eyes; he could sense where the children were standing, every beam and pillar in the school, and even the direction of the wind blowing in through the window.

"Upright and righteous spirit," he murmured.

He suddenly realized that although he no longer had spiritual power, he had read thousands of books and pondered their principles day and night, and unknowingly cultivated a righteous spirit.

What is righteousness and integrity?

It is not spiritual power, nor cultivation, but a kind of spiritual strength. It is something that naturally arises after a person has read countless books, traveled extensively, and developed a sense of righteousness and responsibility.

This thing is invisible and intangible, but it truly exists.

From that day on, Su Yang's body began to change. His hearing improved to the point that he could tell which child was crying from dozens of meters away.

What surprised him most was that although the Righteous Qi could not be used directly as spiritual power, it could nourish his body. His internal organs, which had been damaged by the Spirit Poison, began to slowly recover under the nourishment of the Righteous Qi.

This wasn't cultivation, yet it was even better than cultivation. Su Yang knew he had found a new path.

The fifth year, the sixth year, the seventh year...

Time flies like water, and year after year has passed.

Su Yang's fame grew so much that even high-ranking officials in the prefecture had heard of him. Someone invited him to be a tutor, offering an exorbitant price, which he refused.

Someone offered to sponsor him to start a school, and he accepted, but on the condition that the money must be used for poor children and not a single penny could be wasted.

His school went from a mud house to three tiled houses, then to a large courtyard with ten rooms. The number of students grew from over thirty to over three hundred, and then to over a thousand.

He was no longer just a village schoolteacher; he had become a true Confucian scholar.

But he still lived in that small house in Qingniu Village, still ate simple meals, and still got up before dawn every day to read. His fingers were covered with thick calluses, the result of years of reading.

The tenth year.

That year, Su Yang was twenty-three years old.

That day, after finishing his last lesson at the school, he returned to his room, sat down as usual, and prepared to practice writing for a while before going to sleep.

He had just reached out his hand when he suddenly felt a jolt.

A surge of righteous energy erupted from his body like a tidal wave, instantly filling the entire room before bursting out and soaring into the night sky. The energy was immense and vast, reaching straight to the heavens, even causing the stars to tremble.

Everyone within a radius of a hundred miles could feel this aura.

Some people looked up at the sky and saw a white light shooting up from the direction of Qingniu Village, like a pillar supporting the sky, connecting the heavens above and the earth below.

In the white light, there was a figure sitting upright. No one could see what the figure looked like, but everyone knew in their hearts that this was the blessing of the God of Literature.

Humanity bestows blessings.

Since ancient times, the blessing bestowed by the God of Literature is neither chosen nor ordained by heaven. When a person's knowledge, virtue, and sense of responsibility reach an ineffable height, humanity will naturally bestow blessings upon them.

A surge of righteous energy, like a long river, flowed from Su Yang's body, circulated throughout the world, and returned to his body.

This time, what returned was not just righteous energy, but also spiritual power? No, not spiritual power, but a power that is higher and purer than spiritual power.

"I want to ensure that all students from impoverished families in the world can receive an education."

He has finally been able to fulfill the words he spoke to Uncle Jin under the big tree in Qingniu Village years ago.